“Well, hurry up,” said Yuri. “I think I can hear people speaking in English somewhere behind us.”
“Guys, if either of you want to take my place sniffing for mines, you’re welcome to it,” said Mitchell. The mines may have been in the ground for seventy years, but they could still be as deadly as the day they were buried. He knew that farmers in Europe still tragically died on a yearly basis, driving over unexploded ordinance from the First World War.
The screen on Mitchell’s mine detector lit up like a Christmas tree. He waved it over a cement tile on the floor, confirming that there was something large and metallic hidden underneath. Mitchell reached over with the detector to the next tile. The sensor found nothing. He took a deep breath, stepped over the booby-trapped tile and placed his foot down on the next tile. When he didn’t hear an explosion, he let out his breath and then pointed at the tile behind him on the floor.
“Step over this one, there’s a mine buried underneath,” warned Mitchell.
“Jesus,” muttered Jackson as he gingerly stepped over the tile and joined Mitchell, as did Yuri.
Mitchell was already making his way down the dark passageway, praying that there weren’t too many more mines hidden along their path. He had faith in his equipment, but nothing was infallible.
Less than a minute later, they came to an intersection. Mitchell looked down at the map in his hand and swore. There wasn’t an intersection drawn on his map.
“Which way do we go?” said Jackson, aiming his flashlight down the tunnels that branched off to the left and right of the one they were following.
“I don’t know. I hate to say it, but this map is basically useless,” said Mitchell despondently.
“Left… go left,” said Yuri, his voice growing excited.
“Why?”
“Because it takes us closer to the volcano; the rock there will be thicker. It makes more sense to place something you don’t want bombed during the war in that direction than if we head to the right and back to the beach.”
“Left it is,” said Mitchell, jamming the map away in his pocket.
Tara could feel the excitement of the hunt building inside her. Mitchell had a lot to pay for. He had killed two of her handpicked assassins and had embarrassed her by helping Taro Satomi escape. The thought of killing him slowly in front of Atsuko Satomi before putting a bullet in the back of her skull brought a wicked smile to her dark face.
The two women in the lead had no problem following the tracks left by Mitchell and his people. Years of dust had accumulated on the concrete tiled floor of the tunnel. Their footprints were as easy to follow as tracks made by children playing in wet sand.
It was only a matter of minutes before they caught up with them.
Tara was about to turn about and see what was going on behind her when a deafening explosion tore through the tunnel. The lead woman had stepped on the hidden mine, detonating it. In the blink of an eye, the blast tore her to pieces, while pieces of jagged rock and metal flew through the air, decapitating the second assassin. Her head flew over top of Tara, landing on the ground behind her, rolling along like a macabre soccer ball.
Choking dust filled the air.
Thrown to the ground by the force of the blast, Tara’s ears rang like a church bell calling to the faithful on Sunday. Shaking her head to clear the haze clouding her mind, Tara coughed loudly as she fought to clear the dust from her throat. She looked through the dust cloud and saw that Atsuko and all four men on the ground. They all looked stunned by the blast, but none of them seemed to have suffered more than a few scratches. She turned her head and saw the scene of devastation barely ten meters from where she lay. Blood and body parts were strewn everywhere. Like some kind of obscene painting, blood coated the walls and the roof where the lead woman had once been.
Slowly, Tara got back up onto her feet. Her chest hurt. She didn’t doubt that she had bruised a few ribs when she was flung to the ground.
Looking back at the men, Tara told them to get up.
Coughing and wheezing for air, Atsuko and the men got up on unsteady feet. Tara eyed the youngest man. He looked to be no more than twenty years of age. The look of fear in his eyes made Tara smile. He would be cautious where her handpicked assassins had been too bold. Their arrogance had cost them their lives.
“You take the lead,” said Tara to the young man.
The man hesitated.
With a practiced move, Tara drew her pistol from her holster and before the man knew what was going on, he was looking down the barrel of her 9mm automatic aimed square between his eyes.
“I said take the lead and keep a sharp eye out for booby traps.”
The young man warily stepped past the remains of the two women and then slowly made his way down the dark and menacing tunnel.
Tara waved at the others to follow. The odds had dropped in their favor, not that she cared. As long as she made it out alive, all the others were expendable.
The sound of the deadly blast raced down the narrow tunnel system like a bullet speeding down the barrel of a rifle.
“My God, they must have stepped on the mine,” said Jackson.
“Hopefully they’ll turn back,” added Yuri.
Mitchell wasn’t so sure. “They’re fanatics. They’ll keep coming for us.”
“For once it would be nice to bump into some people who thought with their brains, not their balls,” said Jackson.
“We’ve probably gained a minute or two’s respite,” said Mitchell as he turned to continue moving down the corridor.
After about a minute, they started to come across long-abandoned rooms. Dust covered everything. They shone their lights inside; it was like looking into the past. On the wall of one room was a poster showing the blood-soaked hand of a U.S. soldier reaching for the Japanese Emperor. Beside it hung a calendar that hadn’t been turned over since August, 1945. At the next turn, Yuri pointed straight ahead. Trusting in Yuri’s innate navigational skills, Mitchell pushed on. Thankfully, aside from a few rusted nails found along their path, the metal detector had remained silent. They soon came to a row of rooms that ran down either side of the passage; Mitchell shone his flashlight down the tunnel. He saw that there were at least a dozen rooms. Heavy metal doors barred the way inside.
Mitchell was about to ask for suggestions when Yuri shone his light on a room on the right-hand side of the tunnel. A smile crept across his face.
“Ryan, look,” said Yuri, his voice full of excitement.
“What is it?” said Mitchell, trying to see what Yuri saw.
He shone his light above the doorway. “There is your answer.”
Written above the doorway was a sign in Japanese and Cyrillic. All of the other rooms only had Japanese lettering above them.
“What does it say?” asked Jackson.
“Zemletryasniye,” replied Yuri in Russian.
“Sorry, Yuri, my Russian is a bit rusty today,” said Jackson sarcastically. “What does that mean?”
“Earthquake. I think they were building something that could trigger an earthquake,” explained Yuri.
It all now made sense to Mitchell. That’s why Cypher had built his factory in the middle of nowhere: to build and test the device. Its subsequent destruction by an earthquake that should have levelled homes hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter somehow had been fixed only on a small area of the desert.
Mitchell moved his mine detector along the door. It came back negative. He placed his hand on the door latch and pushed down. With a loud, protesting squeal, the door opened ever so slightly. Shining his flashlight inside the pitch-black room, Mitchell checked for tripwires or any other booby trap in the area around the entrance. Relieved at finding none, he put his shoulder into the door and pushed it open wide enough for him to slip through.